il vino e il polvo

When we started our dusty trek to the winery, and took those first steps out of La Morra and into the vineyards, we seemed to be headed in the right direction. But then something happened and we went su (up) when we should of gone giu (down). And then giu (down) when we should have gone su (up).

The vineyards seemed to run well into forever, with line after line of grapevines shooting into the distance like pinstripes. Somewhere along the way we lost track of the trail markers and didn't know if we were supposed to go up and over the hill standing in our way or not. Turns out we were.

So, after a long dusty haul - that included going over the hill - we arrived at the Renato Ratti winery, pant cuffs stuffed with yellow silt and shoes that looked like we'd recently undertaken a lunar landing. When we rang the bell and apologized for being so late the voice that squawked out of the call box made sure to clarify..."TWO HOURS late"...and then paused for effect.



I think we gained back some of their respect when we explained that we'd walked to the winery - yes, on foot - and gotten lost in the process. The small piles of dust that sprinkled across their floors in our wake seemed to confirm our story. We even got a glass of water before we embarked on our belated tour of the wine museum.

The tour was short, dank, and musty as Stefano and I followed one of the winery employees through an old monastery. We could make out barrels in the basement (where not all of the lights were working) and came to appreciate the unique shapes of wine bottles from the region. There was a collection of historic wine labels and photos of the man who started it all. In all honesty it was a lot of fun roaming around the small museum - and this was before the wine sampling made everything even better.



The Renato Ratti tasting room overlooks a horizon lined with grapevines and a region known for incredible wines. We sat there, wineglasses in hand, appreciating the fact that our jeans were coated with the very same dust that supported the growth of the grapes we were drinking. And these weren't just any grapes. These were nebbiolo and barbera. Grapes that become Barolo and Barbaresco, the wines people across the world recognize by their first names.



When the wines crossed our tongues in that place and after that walk, they tasted better than they have tasted anywhere else in the world. They tasted like the sun that had slowed us, and the dust that coated us. They tasted of the stories we'd heard, and a little of the impatience that had squawked at us for being late. They tasted like a day in La Morra.

And they tasted beyond perfect after a visiting Canadian cardiologist gave us a ride back to town. He not only saved us from an uphill walk back, but he should also be credited with keeping us from likely getting lost again. His generosity not only meant that we were able to catch the last bus back to Bra, but it also gave us the extra time we needed for a quick pre-bus meal. We had a glass of wine, some cheese, cured meats, a little bagna cauda...



and maybe just a little bit of dust.

burano with a b

The island of Burano is a vaporetto ride from Venice and is not to be confused with Murano, the island whose name is synonymous with glassblowing. Burano - with a B - is the farther out island of the two and is known for its lace making and the vivid hues of its homes. It's also the island to visit when Venice seems a little more crowded than usual, or when you'd like to see just how big Italian mosquitoes can get.



Now, don't get me wrong, there are certainly tourists in Burano - and souvenir shops as well - but there are fewer of both out here. Instead, Burano's crowds are of the brick and mortar variety. They don't surge and they don't run you ragged; they simply stand still and simmer in the sun. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder these buildings are slathered in the red of cherries, the green of avocado skins, and the pink of Pepto-Bismal. They are the colors that buildings never are.

We wandered the pedestrian ways along the canals and tucked into stone backyards where laundry hung. We ran from the mosquitoes, marveled at a tipping tower, and started running again. We drank caffé made by a barista who ran the New York marathon in almost half the time I did and we took scads of photos in front of walls of every color.



Buildings may not usually be these colors, but after an afternoon in Burano you'll finally ask "why not?"

all together now

Sometimes we worry that the uniquely vivid slacks so beloved by Italian males are going unnoticed since we've left Italy. So during our recent wander across northern Italy we made up for lost time... In Treviso. In Venezia and Burano. In Milano and Alba and Bassano del Grappa. The uomini of Italy didn't let us down and even made sure to hang out in pairs so that they would be easier to spot in a crowd. And for their efforts, we say: "Grazie mille. Our trip wouldn't have been the same without you."

Oh, and one more thing: "Punch pants!"

i miss you

I said my teary "arrivederci" to Italy more than a week ago but I can't make myself believe it.

My stomach is still waiting for a dish of puntarelle with acciughe, and my mind's eye keeps hunting for familiar faces from our Milano street. My mouth wants to have a conversation in Italian and my ears want to hear my name the way the Italians say it. In fact, this whole thing feels more like a jagged rip through the space/time continuum than a move back home.

It hurts. Nothing is in the right place. The light switch is inside the room instead of outside in the hallway. Laundry is in dryers instead of flapping in the winter breeze. And the scooters and their scooting have all gone away.

I blame women here for not wearing stiletto heels. I blame the prices for not having the tax included. And I blame the cars on the streets for being so very large.

However, I will admit to running full gallop at a Thai food delivery guy knocking on our apartment door at dinnertime and bowing to the glory of toasted bagels with veggie cream cheese. The tomatoes here may be taste-free but I will be able to buy them at any hour of the day. And I will open my windows with a smile knowing that something so simple as a screen promises to keep the mosquitoes out.

Sure, it's good to be "home." And it's doubly good to be back with Stefano. But in the middle of all this tumult it's easy to start asking yourself exactly where "home" is.

Is it where you vote? Is it where you live? Is it where your heart feels fullest?

Because - for a while there - home sure felt like Milan.

i migliori di milano : amici

Living in Milan has been an incredible experience and leaving is very difficult. Stefano, who's already back in the States, was hit with a sad longing for Italy nearly as soon as he'd left. It's hard to leave behind the adventure of a new culture, the sights we chased after, and the foods we so happily consumed.

But the item that will leave a far more tangible fissure in our well-traveled hearts is the people whom we've met. It's surprising how close you can get to strangers in two years. If you're lucky you can go from nothing to sharing dinners with their families.

And we've been very lucky.



One of our best friends in Milan took me out to dinner with his family the other night. There was more raw seafood at this one meal than I have eaten in two full years in this country, perhaps in my entire life. And I may have previously seen the things we were eating swimming around an aquarium tank but I have never before seen some of them on a dinner table.

But I ate it all and our friend was an excellent guide who knew everything about what we were eating. For each little undersea creature he would explain how to best remove it from its sometimes sharp and spiny shell and then how to eat it.



At one point we were eating these very large, very strange, praying mantis + shrimp kind of things. And I couldn't remember the name of this creature. They kept telling me and it kept just disappearing from my brain. Mind you, the entire dinner was in Italian, and my wine glass kept miraculously refilling, so my language skills were probably not at their finest - but I just couldn't understand what these things were.

The next thing I know my cell phone is ringing with a text message: "Si chiamano canocchie o cicale di mare." Our friend, sitting next to me, had sent me a text message to remind me what these weird crustaceans are called. It's goofy to say but I wish I could keep that text message forever. Not only does it tell me what those darn things are called but it also tells me I have a friend.



We ate giant shrimp that had been cooked and then put in an ice bath to cool them down quickly - digging around with a big spoon to find them laying under all of that pebbled ghiaccio. There was a plate of teeny tiny snails and pointy sticks to take them out of their teeny tiny shells. And we had burrata - that decadent combination of cheese wrapped in cheese. And olives and fried things and always more raw things. And don't forget the bread to drag through the sea urchins.



In the end we took a photo in front of the display with all of the seafood on ice. The lobsters behind us were languidly waving their antennae and we put our arms over each others' shoulders for the camera. It was dark in the restaurant but I love that photo. It reminds me what I loved most about Italy.

il migliore di milano : take-out / portare via

Italian take-out is just that. It's Italian food put in little aluminum containers that are given to you so steaming hot that if you don't keep shifting the hand with which you hold them, you risk a searing set of risotto burns.

The bad news is that there aren't many other options for take-out cuisine. But the good news is that once you realize your previous tradition of Friday night Thai food is a thing of the past, you quickly see that your current options will obliterate all memories of the passionate love affair you once had with spring rolls.

Any excuse you can think of - I don't have time to cook; I don't have time to grocery shop; My neighbor's children are practicing the piano and the recorder at the exact same time - is a good excuse to get food from Gambarotta.

This place is excellently normal. There's nothing fancy or luxurious about it but Gambarotta is always full of Italians. Tutti gli italiani eat there: families, young couples, old couples, people alone talking on their cell phones. On weekends it's hard to get a table.



The reason is the food. It's what you expect of dinner at someone's house - that authenticity, that sense of legitimacy that comes from a real meal. It's like rolling up to a relative's house for dinner except that instead of eating there you can take the food back to your house and no one will think that you're rude.

I love the puntarelle with acciughe. Puntarelle are a vegetable that I didn't know existed until I came to Italy. They're crispy shoots that are a sort of cross between celery and fennel, and they go incredibly well with anchovies.

And their bruschettona -- it's so good that certain unnamed family members shamelessly ordered it with three consecutive meals. It's a giant slice of bread piled with tomatoes, basil, olive oil, buffalo mozzarella, and thin stripes of mild anchovies. I dare you to come up with a better bruschetta than this - it can't be done.



The orecchiette with cima di rapa are savory and rich. The ear-shaped pasta snuggles up to the sauteed cima di rapa and there's this delayed kick that comes from what must be red pepper flakes.

If you order these three things you will be ecstatic. And I imagine that if you order anything else off the menu, you'll also be pretty darn happy. The problem is that I keep ordering the same things over and over. It's kind of like what I used to do with Thai food except that now my memories of spring rolls are fading into the distance.

But I can sure tell you about the bruschettona...

Gambarotta, Via Moscova 50, Milano

san valentino

I spent Valentine's Day with the movers. Sure, they were nice guys. And yah, they packed our things with tender loving care. But no matter how delicately another man treats your antique bookcase, it's not quite the same as being with your husband.

The day's real saving grace was the friend who stepped up to the plate and was my co-captain during three days of moving. I had the Italian skills and she had the eye for detail. Her suggestion of "Do you think you might want them to put another layer of padding there?" turned into my Italian version of "Please put some more padding there." This went on for three days and we were a glorious team.

But - and here's where this friend shows her true range of abilities - she was also playing for another team. A sneakier and far more romantic team that had been plotting its next move since early January. And when she left the apartment on February 14 for an Italian language lesson, I suspected nothing.

When she came back and I opened the door to a lush bouquet of beautiful flowers, I was beyond surprised. They were for me from Stefano - and those two had planned the whole thing before he left in January. (She even used part of her Italian lesson to fine tune her flower-buying vocabulary.)

The flowers threw a golden glow on an apartment full of cardboard boxes. And the thought behind the flowers - well, that about cracked my heart in two.

I may have spent the day with the movers, but my heart was in Washington, DC.

dumplings + butter

One of the best things about going to Trento is the ride there. If you take an early morning train, your ride will start in darkness. Eventually the sky begins to glow pink, and the mountains crack across the horizon. There are tall, snow-blanketed peaks in the distance and emerald fields of grass running along the train tracks. Barren trees and turned-dirt and farmhouses in varying stages of disrepair come and go along the way.

Italy is beautiful and moody in the morning, especially in the north where the mountains are king. The orange and pink sky eventually becomes green, and then blue, and then the mist along the ground starts to burn off. The sun, when it comes, is a shaking blast of tangerine and its light bounces off the metal surfaces of the train.

My parents sleep. Italy passes. And the mountains we're riding past are so very far from the flatness of Illinois. By the time we get to Brescia the mystery has turned into morning and everyone is awake.

Part of the pleasure of our ride was certainly due to the scenery but another large chunk can be credited to the ladies with whom we shared our train car. These two Italian women, both well into their lives, each had something about them that made our ride more than just a ride.



One of the ladies channeled her sadness over the recent loss of her husband into a guided tour of what hides in the mountains... She would grip our arm with one warm hand and point with the other - look over there! (There's a small church set in the rock that she and her husband had once visited.) Could we see it? Right there on the cliff. (They took a car and then a bus to reach it.) And then over there, on the other side of the train, could we see the memorial to the fallen soldiers...

And the other woman, the older of the two, was so delightfully vivace. All clad in fur and orange with a solid set of Persols keeping the sun out of her eyes. She had lifted her own suitcase high and strong into the luggage rack without a second breath and had won my admiration early on by stating that the train car was cold - my dear - because it had been sitting in the train yard all night. No more. No less. A beautifully matter-of-fact response from a culture that usually likes a bit more narration with its answers.

When the older woman asked if I'd graduated and I told her that I was already working, she pronounced me "in gamba" and said that she too had been a working woman who traveled the globe for her career. I couldn't have pictured her doing anything else.

We all got off the train in Trento and double-kissed goodbye in the station. Each of the women was being picked-up by some conglomeration of relatives and we had sight-seeing to do. But the sights were already there. As soon as you get off the train you can see that Trento is ringed by mountains.



At the center of town, alongside the Piazza Duomo with its wide open space and Neptune fountain, stands a very handsome Duomo. Inside is a dramatic marble baldacchino modeled on Bernini's larger and more famous work in Rome's St. Peter's. Two long and eerie flights of stone steps crawl along the sides of the church leading up to the rafters from where, I'd imagine, the views of the mountains are incredible.

More than a few buildings in town are fronted with crumbling frescos. And apparently there's a wonderful chunk of the old Roman city that you can visit called "Tridentum." However, we wouldn't be able to confirm its existence because, as often happens in Italy, Tridentum was closed during our visit.



The food is a force to be reckoned with and seems to have drawn its strength and heart from nearby Austria. In fact, until 1919, and the end of World War 1, Trento was Austrian territory. So here there are no timid pastries and no namby-pamby lunches. There are donuts, sweet breads, and cakes, and incredible meals drowned in butter and draped in cheese. Have the dumplings, the polenta, and the gorgonzola - and then make an afternoon of walking along the river trying to repair the damage.

At the end of our day we piled back into the train for our three-hour ride home. There were no interesting strangers to meet and for most of the ride back to Milan I was the only one awake. But that's ok, the mountains kept me company.

la migliore di milano : pizza

Ten years ago I was told not to bother with Milan. People said it was grey and ugly and a useless stop for a backpacker. So I skipped Milan and went on my merry way.

Who knew I would be lucky enough to make up for my mistake?

Milan is a wonderful place but it's true that you wouldn't know it from the surface. The word "grey" will be included in most any description of the city and urban beauty awards aren't exactly filling Milan's résumé. But - and here's where it gets interesting - that very same lack of surface appeal is what keeps Milan real.

Italians work here and Italians eat here. Italians walk their dogs and shop here. Milan is not filled with tourists and that, my dear friends, is what makes Milan the perfect place for you to shop, eat and walk your dogs.

The pizza in Milan is made for Italians. The same goes for the gelato. In Milan you eat as Italians eat and thankfully, there's really no other choice. And so begins my sporadic listing of what we've found to be the best of this delightfully grey city.

There is no exaggeration in saying that pizza in Italy is an art. The dough can be chewy-soft-light-airy and cradles tomato and all other manner of coverings. It comes out of a wood oven and has burnt spots and bubbles, and there is zero relation between this and the pizza that is delivered to your doorstep in an insulated red bag back in the States.

Pizza here comes out of a giant stove where a man who's been swirling and twirling dough for years has used a long paddle to shove it deep into the oven closer to the wood fire. If you sit near the oven you will be warmer than if you sit someplace else. And the size of the pizza is perfect for one, it always is.

If you eat one pizza in Milan it should be the marinara pizza from Pizzeria Sibilla. Tomato sauce, garlic slivers, olive oil, basil and a couple of flecks of spices. That's it. And that's all you need.

You don't need cheese. You don't need vegetables. Of course you could have them and be quite happy, but first try the marinara. After loving the puddles of olive oil nestled in with tomato and little pieces of garlic you won't go back. And you shouldn't.

Once, I made the mistake of ordering a regular margherita pizza (with cheese) while Stefano had a marinara. It was a mistake I never made again.

This pizza is why you eat in Italy.

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Pizzeria Sibilla, Via Mercato 14, 02.864.64.567
Closed Sunday at lunch and all day Monday

the eternal chaos

Despite the swarms of motorini and the rapid confusion of small European automobiles, Rome is nothing if not a pedestrian's paradise. You can walk absolutely anywhere and will find yourself tripping left, right and center over fabulous confusion. There is no grid in Rome. There are no straight lines. There are tumbling ruins and a veering populace and food fit for nightlong binges.

Turning a corner in this city turns back time. Monuments, fountains, and "very important places" lurk in plain sight, smack in the middle of our living breathing modern world. There are no introductions and no preludes. You turn the corner and there it is, and the surprise is as strong as if you'd peeked around a tree in mid-August and gotten a snowball in the face.

We walked and we walked and sometimes I knew where we were. It's a wild tumble, Rome. Its chaos spills up and over the curbs and its dust coats you in an invisible powder of the ages. Who can really understand what they're surrounded by in the Colosseum? Who can look at the layers of sun-warmed stone and imagine what it could have been - how it could have smelled - when this place was filled with man, animal, sweat, sand and blood?



And there are the cold Vatican Museums filled with so much cold marble and cold air, with mismatched stone heads paired with stone bodies from every age, halls of impossible tapestries made by a certain "Maria," and miles and miles of plundered loot. To see the Vatican museums is to understand how much you do not understand. About time. About art. And most certainly about power.

And the pizza at the Vatican... its mediocrity leads me to believe that the Pope doesn't dine in his own cafeteria. Maybe, instead, he picnics in St. Peter's, under Michelangelo's Pieta', wondering how he can get people to stop taking photos of the Sistene Chapel ceiling once and for all.

What happens in the Pantheon when it rains? How do they keep the rain out? Ah, but they don't. The rain has fallen through that glorious hole in the ceiling for centuries. And why does Sant Eustachio coffee taste so very good? Another good question but this one has no answer. Their "secret to perfect coffee" is a secret, but their coffee granita - so rich and syrupy, all concentrated coffee in slurpie form - can't be hurt by the thick clouds of whipped cream in which it rests.



The best restaurants in Rome are on the other side of the river, in Trastevere with its cock-eyed cobblestones and grimy alleys. I know of one of them because an Italian colleague with whom I was traveling wandered into a florist's shop and asked the owner where he eats. He said Trattoria da Olindo and so that's where we ate. To find it, I first find Trastevere, then I find the florist, and then I try to find the corner around which the trattoria hides. You wouldn't know it was there if - at just the right moment - you didn't turn yourself around to stare it straight in the face.



My other favorite was a friend's favorite. She's left Rome but it's still there. It's hard to find in the dark because before it opens it's closed up tight and quite invisible. We waited them out because we had a reservation and knew there was a table in there for us. The reservation turned out to be very important - people were turned away as we sat there loving our meals. But before Le Mani in Pasta would feed us our yolk-yellow magnificent carbonara we first had to kill some time.



In our search for something to do we found St. Cecilia's and a quiet chorus of nuns singing an evening's prayers. Some voices were sweeter than others and St. Cecilia, in cold hard marble, lay beneath them. St. Cecilia is known for the three knife strikes that would not sever her head from her body and this marble body, delicately crumpled and damaged by her attackers, lay serenely below the alter, drenched in muted song and prayer.

This, my sixth, was a nearly perfect visit to Rome. It would have been perfect - such wonderful company, such a heady itinerary, and the food, oh the food - except that in the first half hour of the 4.5 hour train ride back to Milan I poured an entire can of Coca-Cola into my lap.



I can point the finger at Rome's beautiful confusion and say I was just trying to maintain the same rhythm of discovery and surprise that had thrust us through three days in Rome. But, as you can probably guess, four hours of soda-soaked pants isn't quite as thrilling as the experience of turning a corner and coming upon the Trevi Fountain at night.

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Trattoria da Olindo, Vicolo della Scala 8, 06/5818835

Le Mani in Pasta, Via dei Genovesi 37, 06/5816017

p is for panettone

Panettone is THE holiday cake in northern Italy. It's a soft and light egg bread studded with candied citron and raisins that originated in Milan, and Christmas is definitely not Christmas without a panettone in the house.

In December, Milan sidewalks are host to packs of pedestrians toting panettone boxes by their sturdy ribbon handles. The box itself is a tell-tale shape reminiscent of a large squared-off gumdrop. Supermarkets and high-end gastronomias alike feature floor-to-ceiling pyramids of ready-made panettone by any number of major brands. Trust me, you couldn't pass Christmas in Milan without a panettone if you tried.

And you shouldn't.

We placed our panettone order with our favorite baker, Robert, more than a week in advance. We learned our lesson last year when we landed one of Robert's excellent panettone by sheer luck - someone else had cancelled their order at the last minute. We considered it a Christmas miracle.

This year our one-kilo panettone was ready to come home with us on Christmas Eve and we could hardly wait to eat it. Panettone, especially those made by Robert, are amazingly light and soft. Sweet chunks of candied orange peel and raisin fleck the yellow bread. And thick slices of this tall bread have come to mean Christmas to us too.

Just the smell of a panettone is enough to raise spirits to an appropriately Christmas level - and the heady profumo of a good panettone, once floating in a room, cannot be rushed to leave. It just hangs there smelling so very, very wonderfully sweet.

We had panettone for Christmas breakfast with hot cocoa. Stefano made the hot cocoa using his secret weapon, the milk frother. A good milk frother can elevate even the most simple Swiss Miss into the stratosphere. Not to mention what a pair of fluffy marshmallows on top will do. A drink worthy of the historic panettone!

And what does one do with their panettone after Christmas?



Make french toast, of course.

There has never been a more delicate and delicious french toast, a more perfect bread to soak up egg and vanilla, cinnamon and milk. Hunks of panettone french toast make the day after Christmas almost as enjoyable as Christmas itself.



In northern Italy, panettone is Christmas and Christmas is panettone. And the day after Christmas... Well, that's just icing on the cake.

P is for panettone.

anno nuovo

2008 came in with a bang. And then another. And still more.

The fireworks were more a storm than a smattering and they kept the New Year's sky over Milan bright. Color flew up from every direction: from homes, from parks, and from the streets.

We stood on our balcony, in the cold dark with our jackets balanced over our shoulders, watching sparks shoot into the sky and trail back into the night.

Milan has never felt as active as in those first minutes of 2008. There was the booming of the fireworks and the light above the city. There was the confusion of where it was all coming from, and the question of who could possibly be in charge of all this chaos.



But chaos wasn't solely for the skies. The television options were a right mess. There was the red Barney-esque Gabibbo counting down the seconds with his dancing showgirls and veline, and Frankenstein Junior (aka Young Frankenstein) in Italian. And before that, a little film called Empire Strikes Back to set the tone for the new year; use the "forza" Luke.

Our New Year's Eve meal consisted of an excellent plate of puntarelle with anchovy sauce prepared by Stefano, and slices of baguette topped with the amazing delicacies we'd picked up in Treviso the weekend before. We had squash crème and ricotta. Herbed anchovies with olive oil. Crème baccala. Mostarda. Ricotta and pesto. We sat on the floor and ate everything, accompanied by a bottle of wine.

2008 will be more than a small challenge for us, and soon our days of Gabibbo and dancing showgirls will be in our past rather than our present. But we're not there yet. There's still more ricotta to eat, and more Italian tv to melt our brains. And once that's all said and done... That's when we'll have to use the "forza" ourselves.

Buon 2008!

say it with light

This year Milan decided to say Happy Holidays with lights.

Well, not really "Happy Holidays" because what Italians actually say is "Merry Christmas." They've not been the quickest to embrace the idea of a generic holiday greeting and you'll get a hearty "Buon Natale" thrown at you no matter what you celebrate.

So Milan said its Merry Christmas with a big mess o' lights. The streets were full of them. And in addition to making this city seem something like 10,000 times more welcoming, the extra light from the extra lights didn't hurt either. The holidays in Milan were like Las Vegas's shy little sister - if she were Catholic and her focus was more on Christmas cheer than gambling.

Some new friends arrived in Italy after the lights had already gone up and were surprised to find out that Milan isn't always like this. Alas, no. But it should be.



Our Christmas was a good one and replete with the three P's: panettone, pancetta and presents. Although, truth be told one of the presents didn't make it here until December 31. But that was Italian UPS's fault.

As I've taken to saying, in Italy "must" is what's left after the grapes are pressed. The fact that it was made clear to UPS that the package "must" be delivered for Christmas didn't really translate into the Italian business model. Instead, Stefano received the gift of Italian customer service which at its high point during the 10-day holding pattern offered the reason for the package's delay as: "there are a lot of packages out there this time of year."

We'd be shocked that this was the official excuse provided by an international delivery company that delivers packages for its living, but that kind of thinking only gets you heartache in Italy.



Anyway, the presents (all of them) were eventually opened, the panettone was eaten, and the pancetta was fried. Hot cocoa was present - with marshmallows - and we made a meatloaf, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and broccoli for dinner.

It was a wonderful Christmas and we're lucky. Lucky to have spent it together. Lucky to have spent it here. And lucky to have loving family and friends around the world to share our seasons greetings with us.



Just don't send those greetings by Italian UPS.

snow for a day

We've finally seen snow in Milan. But like a certain someone who headed home yesterday, the snow has already said its sad goodbyes.

Our Italian friends had warned us that snow in Milan isn't a good thing but rather a messy, slushy, grey disaster. We didn't want to believe them.

And when the snow came it was beautiful, little white flakes dancing in the air, landing on our scarves, giving us the winter we'd hoped for but never had in Milan.



But after a day+ of snow came the rain. And that's when the city went from winter wonderland to that messy, slushy stuff our friends had described.

As far as I know, the city of Milan has never compared itself to Chicago in the snow-cleanup department, and maybe we shouldn't either, but let's just say that Milan could learn a thing or two from Chicago about what to do to its sidewalks and park paths after it snows.

Milan's current standard operating procedure after a snowfall is: do nothing. The procedure after the rain comes is: see above.

So the snow and the following rains gave any area that was not attended to by a shop-owner or a building custodian the consistency of a Slurpie. Make that two inches of Slurpie that want so very, very much to become one with your socks and shoes.



If we were true Milanese, we'd put on our pink slacks ("Punch Pants!"), pick up an umbrella, and head to work. Or we'd take a broom and start brushing snow into the street sideways.

But we're not Milanese. So instead of begrudging the snow or wearing pink pants to show winter who's really boss, we took out our camera and made sure that the only snow we've ever seen in Milan lasts longer than 24 hours somewhere - even if that's just in our photos.

si mangia bene

The way an Italian indicates that you have a good place in mind for your weekend getaway is short and sweet. You tell them the name of the town, and they say: si mangia bene. (The food is good.) If you tell an Italian where you're going and you don't hear that response... you might want to change your plans.

Si mangia bene will always be the first thing out of their mouth. Which means, of course, that it's the first thing that comes to mind. And we love this idea, that food either makes or breaks a place. It's such a delightful way to rate a city, to judge a region. Forget the chit-chat about architecture. Stop wasting time talking about the art. Let's get straight to the point and discuss whether or not we like the food.

And I think we've made it clear... we like the food.

The last weekend of the year we took an early 3+ hour train ride past dark and frosty fields, past Lake Garda and the snow-covered mountains deep in the distance... to Treviso, in the Veneto. Despite train delays that caused us to miss our connection, and crisp temps that kept us both wadded up in more layers of clothing than I appreciate, my response to anyone considering a visit to Treviso would be a stomach-busting "si mangia bene!"



As soon as you enter the city walls, you're buffeted through street upon street of chocolate and sweet shops. Within our first fifteen minutes in town, we were lured by the siren call of three different chocolate shops. I won't go into the gory details of our inability to resist chocolate because - as everyone knows - resisting chocolate is an overrated and useless skill. Especially in Italy.

A far more commendable skill is Stefano's spot-on restaurant research. Based on his Treviso advance planning, our first item of business was swinging by the restaurant where we would later eat lunch in order to make a reservation. Second item of business: hot chocolate in the chocolate shop across the street.

The petite and cosmopolitan woman whose chocolate shop we visited was the perfect person with whom to discuss hot chocolate texture. In Italy hot chocolate always falls somewhere between pudding and syrup on the viscosity scale. The woman agreed with us that hot chocolate should not be a pudding, because only pudding should be pudding. She also was diplomatic enough to state that the American version, which we described as powder + water, could probably be attributed to cultural norms rather than defective chocolate technology. Her hot chocolate, which had the ideal consistency of a thick drink, happens to be made by melting dark chocolate in milk. It's not too sweet, not too thick, and is perfectly accepting of a little extra sugar swirled in for good measure. It's quite good.

After our hot chocolate we still had a cappuccino and brioche on the brain. We've indulged in this perfect morning combination nearly every Saturday morning that we've lived in Italy and by now it's become something of a staple. In our hunt for a good cafe we went in the direction of what, from a distance, could have been a pastry shop. When we got closer we found something that changed our plans.

It was a cichetti bar - the sort of enoteca we're used to seeing in Venice - and it was full of men working their way through small cups of wine and savory snacks well before noon. Each chunk of bread was covered with slabs of cheese; thin piles of cured meats; pickled and briny vegetables. And for us there was no turning back.



The very idea of cappuccino and brioche flew out the bar room door and all that remained before us was a petite tumbler of red wine and a plate of savory delicacies. And we've never made a better breakfast decision. The next time someone tries to tell me that the breakfast of champions can be found in an orange cardboard box, I'll have to insist that it's actually sitting in a cichetti bar, down a small street in Treviso.

The similarities of this city to Venice don't end at snacking styles. Like Venice, Treviso is also threaded by a fair amount of canals, one of which is crossed by a bridge mentioned by Dante in Il Paradiso. While the canals here are nowhere near as mysterious and complex as Venice's, they do add a nice disturbance to the normalcy of the city and seem to host a fair number of swans and ducks. There's also a wonderful fish and vegetable market found along one of these canals.



Wandering the market is what brought us to one of the most incredible gastronomias that we've had the good luck to visit. After passing stalls piled high with curling magenta radicchio we found "Fermi" at the end of the market road. It might as well have been bathed in a heavenly glow from above...

Suddenly the lady rolling her motorino halfway up the back of my leg faded into the distance and all that mattered was this beautiful vision of food loveliness. In fact, our New Years Eve meal has Fermi to thank for its ingredients. There was a blended squash with garlic - so perfect on ricotta. A creamy and mild baccala. Delicate anchovies in oil with herbs.



Our lunch at the trattoria was nearly as fantastic. We started with an artichoke soup heavy with tender leaves and topped with two hunks of garlic toast. We moved on to fresh pastas enrobed with thick sauces and ended with cake, café and grappa. In truth only one of us had the grappa but we tend to share everything else.

We spent the remainder of our afternoon shopping under porticos, enjoying what seems like a very prosperous city by the looks of its high end shops. When we stopped in an optics boutique to buy a certain someone a gorgeous pair of Persol sunglasses, we received our final mission for the day: we were to visit the first pair of eyeglasses ever painted.

The owner of the optics shop sent us high-tailing it over to the Sala del Capitolo dei Domenicani, to see the frescos painted by Tomaso da Modena in 1353. While "Tomaso da Modena" (Tom from Modena) doesn't have quite the same ring to it as "Leonardo da Vinci" (Leo from Vinci) we ditched the idea of buying fresh pasta to take back to Milan for dinner and ran over to see the frescos instead. A ringing endorsement, no?



We had to rush because our train was scheduled to depart exactly one half hour from the moment we learned of the frescos' existence. So we ran to the church where we thought the frescos were. And then we ran to the place where the frescos actually were. And there was no one there so we stood alone in the room and looked hard for the man with the glasses. After we found him we bought some postcards and then made it to our train on time.

I should also mention that there was a cheddar cheese sighting earlier in the day. While you'd never confuse this country with Wisconsin we thought maybe we'd see the stuff sooner. But this was the first time we'd ever seen cheddar cheese in Italy. So for all of those people touring the bel paese with a hankering for the good old orange stuff, Treviso is the place for you.

It's also the place for us. Si mangia bene... and then some.

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Hot chocolate: DolceAMARO cioccolato, 31100 Treviso - Via Inferiore 14 tel. 0422-542815

Cichetti: Hostaria dai Naneti, Vicolo Broli 2, Treviso

Gastronomia: Fermi, Via S. Parisio 15/17 - 31100 Treviso, tel. 0422.540818

Trattoria: TONI del SPIN di Alfredo Sturlese & C., 31100 Treviso, Via Inferiore, 7, Tel. 0422 543 829, www.ristorantetonidelspin.com

Cheddar Cheese sighting: Eredi di Danesin Luigi di Danesin Ferruccio, Corso del Popolo, 28 - 31100 Treviso, tel. 0422.540625, www.danesin.it

topinambour and chocolate

Varese is about an hour away from Milan and, luckily for us, was hosting a chocolate festival the weekend before Christmas. The festival had actually been re-scheduled from its original date after a transport strike immobilized Italy the week before and stopped most everything from moving around the country. This included staples such as gas and groceries, and apparently chocolate as well.

December 23rd was unfortunately a cold and wet day. Just cold enough to freeze your hands and just wet enough to worry that a downpour might be on its way. But far be it for moisture and a gray day to wring all the joy out of a chocolate festival.

We went with a handful of friends and fanned out, exploring the booths and snagging samples of the chocolates they had on offer. I've said it before but it's worth repeating: Italy has fabulous chocolate. There's a place in this world for Hershey's but it's not at an Italian chocolate fest. These are chocolates that melt warmly and delicately on the tongue, that are layered with flavors, with textures, and that reflect unique tastes -- think salt, anice, fennel... It's easy to taste too much, to get too excited, to buy far too many tiny parcels filled with chocolates.



But we weren't alone in our quest. Varese was filled with a fair amount of guests indulging their chocolate fantasies and there was also a giant penguin in attendance. Some sort of mascot, or just a random weirdo -- we're still not sure. But you'd better believe that the ladies in our group got a photo with the giant penguin. I mean, you kind of have to.

The character we should have sidled up to was the hearty soul we'll call Santa Magro, aka the world's skinniest Santa. I don't think anyone has ever seen a Santa that thin, a Santa so unconcerned with the conventional characteristics of Santa. I mean, this guy didn't even put a pillow in his shirt. But there he was on Main Street in Varese handing out balloons and the like. I guess living with Mrs. Claus up at the North Pole has cut down on this Italian Santa's opportunities to eat Mom's cooking.



We found a great drogheria while moving from piazza to piazza. Italian drogherias are usually fun places to wander -- they're filled with a little bit of everything. Wine, chocolate, pasta, topinambour. Topinambour? Yah, topinambour! Everybody knows what that is, right?

No, not really. I found a jar labeled "Topinambour e acciughe" in the back room of the drogheria and appreciated the fact that I had never, ever, heard of such a thing. I turned to an Italian man who was standing nearby and asked him what this Topinambour stuff was. He said he had no idea. He even pulled off the price tag so he could read the entire label and got no further than I had.

The lady at the cash register - one of the owners - explained that a topinambour is, in fact, a topinambour. The more useful portion of her explanation was when - in response, I'm sure, to the perplexed look on my face - she described the mystery ingredient as a vegetable, a tuber. So at least we know that the jar we now have in our cabinet features not only anchovies, but some sort of tuber.



Tubers weren't the only intriguing items in Varese food shops. There were more than a few windows featuring creepy food combinations under aspic. Based on what I can tell from window displays at this time of the year, Italians seem to like most anything when it's coated with a generous blanket of clear gelatin.

Hmmmm, carrots, peas and tuna... Is it under aspic? Ok, I'll buy it! Shrimp, egg and red pepper... Is there aspic involved? Give me three! Nothing says Merry Christmas and Happy New Year like a thick covering of quivering goo.



Far more appealing is the pizza at Fabbrica Pizza. There were five of us, we each ordered a pizza, and no one was disappointed. In fact, most of us gave a sigh or two throughout the meal. My pizza was an amazing and authentic rendition of a pizza napolitana. Doughy, puffy edges with a saucy center. And the buffalo mozzarella dripped that subtle taste of fields and earth that makes it so special.

The restaurant also was indoor and had heat which made it a pleasant alternative to the cold wintry outside. (Although you'd be surprised how far a cup of Italian hot chocolate will go to improve your mood.)

When we left Varese we had a backpack bursting with chocolate and a small jar filled with a mystery tuber. If I didn't know better I'd say we're ready to combine the two and boil up some aspic.

Buon Anno da Milano! (and Varese)

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Fabbrica pizza Via G. Ferrari, 5 (C.so Matteotti) Tel. 0332.232.939 www.fabbricapizza.com